Regarding running and cross country skiing, be sure to check out one or more of Hamilton’s glens during your visit there. Hamilton’s campus offers three: two main glens and an emergency-backup glen. Beyond recreational aspects for students, one of the glens attracts tourists:
Tangential to the image above, if you attend a college such as Hamilton or Colgate, strongly consider choosing electives from their excellent geosciences departments. This would support your interest in astronomy, especially to the extent that this interest includes planetary science. Field trips in these courses may take you to the Adirondacks and beyond.
For anyone with an interest in geosciences reading through, the reddish bedrock in the image is a(n) (oxidized) shale, which represents a typical formation of the Paleozic Era in the eastern U.S.
Just FYI, in terms of name recognition Colgate is on Forbes Americas top 50 colleges list. Hamilton isn’t. There was not a single person who heard where my daughter was going that had ever heard of Hamilton. And we live 5 hours away.
That is most likely due, at least in part, to Colgate being D1, Hamilton D3. Colgate is also 50% larger than Hamilton.
Amherst, Bowdoin, Williams are all smaller and on the list too. Just throwing that it out there.
I feel like the people who you would really want to know about Hamilton will know about Hamilton. Not that this really matters, but it has also fairly consistently been in the top 20 US News LACs.
I’m confused. On the one hand, posters are telling OP not to worry about picking the highest ranked college or an “elite name” and really thinking about fit. Several are urging a visit to Union, for example. Then in the next posts, we are hearing about name recognition. Which is it?
Could probably get nice merit from Clark U. and College of Wooster, and they’ve got great student support services.
Clark U was the first school that I thought of when I read the original post. While it’s not necessarily the lowest acceptance rate this student could get into, as a parent of an ADHD kid, it’s sometimes worth considering schools that aren’t the very hardest admit. Neurodivergence can be overwhelming enough…and sometimes its nice to be a star!
I think people are telling OP this, but she seems to be influenced by prestige, so folks are providing info on that as well.
This was the last comment about prestige until it was just mentioned again an hour ago. It’s great advice and worth posting again.
I’m going to be honest, I don’t care about prestige that much. It’s mostly my parents. And they’ve basically made the decision that it’s between Hamilton and Colgate. So we will visit those in the next month before we seal the deal on either one.
Personally, I would have liked to have seen the OP enjoy a longer period of pure celebration on CC — she cried with happiness on hearing of her acceptance to Hamilton, after all.
Regarding the range of comments, while I believe many were made in good faith, some have advocated for what I’d regard as inverted relationships. For example, does a LAC with a 15% admission yield really compare with one with a yield of 41%?
I threw the name recognition Forbes rank out there because the OP seems to care.
Compare in what way? She has some amazing acceptances all great schools, none will hold her back. For some, fit is more important than prestige factor. And I hope she loves Hamilton, but also that she visits the others.
Speaking just for myself, I think three things are true:
(1) Most people in the real world have only the vaguest impressions of colleges outside of their sports teams, including just a few famous colleges, and most of those impressions of even the most famous colleges are mistaken;
(2) The people who actually matter to college graduates in the real world in the sense they served as gate-keepers for next steps generally either know about relevant colleges, or can easily look up what they need to know;
(3) And yet some folks are convinced there are a lot of people who will be important to them in the future who fall in between in a perpetually sophomoric state, something like that they know all the details of the US News National University rankings through 20, 50, or 100, but nothing more about those or any other colleges.
I find myself alternatively pointing out to such folks that (3) isn’t really a thing outside of the artificial world of social media conversations among college applicants, that instead (1) or (2) applies depending on whether you are talking about the general public or next-step gatekeepers respectively.
Which I don’t think is really a contradiction.
I hope the OP gets to visit colleges and choose the one that feels right for her. I notice that @AnonMomof2 brings up fit regularly in posts about Hamilton, perhaps because it was not the right place for their child. I imagine that might play into the comment about the name recognition Forbes rank, but of course that is just my interpretation of the sequence of the posts in this thread.
I personally chose a school for myself based only on prestige and did not pay attention to fit and ended up transferring after my first year. I regret not looking at all the factors beyond rankings.
For what it’s worth, Hamilton does earn a mention in this list of 15 Best Alumni Networks:
I think that a strong alumni network is perhaps more useful in the transition to adult life/working than “name recognition”
Exactly- my kiddo did not think fit mattered and now is waiting on transfer decisions. Also, if you have followed @lilyesh over the years, they had a bad experience at boarding school and left so I would hate for the fit to not be right with college. I wish nothing but the best.
First off, if I haven’t said it upthread, congratulations on all of your acceptances! You have some terrific schools to consider.
Reading this next message from you made me so very happy. It’s great when you can pick a school based entirely on what is the best fit for you.
This next message is a bit more concerning to me, as it seems that your family may not allow you to consider all the options that you’ve been accepted to. As they are the ones who will be paying, they do get to decide what they will pay for.
If, after you’ve visited Colgate and Hamilton, if you do not think there is a great fit with one of them, I would strongly urge you to talk to your family about visiting Union, Franklin & Marshall, and Connecticut College. You can explain that they’ve been so generous as to tell you to choose the school you love the most, and you want to see if you love any of these other schools more than you care for Colgate or Hamilton.
With that said, I think all of us believe this:
The most important thing is affordability - and then fit. Affordability is a part of fit.
Union is a very well thought of college - as are some higher ranked.
Hamilton is an excellent school - but at the same time, for @AnonMomof2 student, it wasn’t a fit.
I was in Spain this summer and came across some Macalester grads and when I mentioned it was a fine school, they were shocked I’ve heard of it. You’ll even have people say that about schools like Rice, WUSTL, Emory, etc. Others have said they get the same comment from a Williams or Amherst.
In the end, one should never go where they can’t afford. And one shouldn’t go to a place they don’t have comfort.
But if you are talking about a school like Hamilton vs. Union, in my opinion, you’re splitting hairs. Yes, one is rated higher but both are outstanding. But both are going to be well reputed. But both may not give you an identical experience - and that’s where hoping you are able to determine fit comes in.
Yes, that’s clear from the multiple comments above about Hamilton and fit. We all get it, and I’m sorry it didn’t work out for her daughter. But @lilyesh has lots of great choices to explore, and Hamilton is one of them.